


An Ocean and a Rock

by Cyme



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Book Spoilers, Developing Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Gen, Homecoming, Wishful Thinking, ass kicking, soul searching
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyme/pseuds/Cyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring has finally arrived in Westeros, but the future is still unwritten for Jaime and Brienne. Parted once again, they struggle to define who they are and what they have become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ocean and a Rock

**Author's Note:**

> _Game of Thrones_ is back! Jaime and Brienne are back! Here, have a story to celebrate! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A white book sat on a white table in a white room. The room was round, its walls of whitewashed stone hung with white woolen tapestries. Brienne had been here once before, long ago, when Jaime had sent her away to find Sansa Stark.

Today, Jaime sat at the head of the massive weirwood table. He was as pale as the room, dressed in the pristine white of the Kingsguard’s spring uniform – a tunic and breeches of soft white wool with a white silk cloak draped lazily across his shoulders. His sword hung at his right hip, the gold and ruby hilt just visible beyond the edge of the table, a mirror to the sword that hung at her own hip. The white of the room, of his clothes and his cloak far outshone Brienne's own modest garb - a tunic of rose and blue with fine wool pants and polished boots so new they squeaked whenever she took a step.

Jaime had always looked good in white. Brienne was sure he knew it, too. His green eyes glinted, as if to tell the world, “Here I am, better than you will ever be.”  The sight of him, so beautiful and confident, made Brienne sick to her stomach with envy – a feeling she did not like to acknowledge, especially when it came to Jaime Lannister. But there were other feelings, too, that coiled in her chest at the sight of him. Feelings Brienne had done well to tamper down and conceal over the years.

Brienne was not the timid, bumbling girl she had been three years ago, when last she had been summoned to the White Sword Tower in the Red Keep. She was still awkward and ugly, still a towering beast of a woman with a marred face and more scars than she could count. But she had seen death many times over; she had been to the seven hells and back. Brienne did not fear and she did not tremble. She was the Oathkeeper, Brienne the Blue, the first lady knight in the realm. She watched Jaime with a composed expression, her face a lake in winter. She would show him nothing but a tranquil surface. Cold and calm and still.

Jaime cleared his throat and brushed his fingertips across the cover of the book as he stood. He walked toward the window overlooking the bay, silent.

Brienne did not know if Jaime was gathering his thoughts, or if he truly meant for her to speak the words first. She would not. He had summoned her; let it be his words that separated them.

She trained her gaze on the white book in front of her. It was loosely wrapped in bleached lambskin, but Brienne could see its thick spine and gilt-edged pages between the folds. It was a thin book, but she had no doubt its heft came from the words each page reverently bore. _The record of the Kingsguard; everything I’ve ever wanted here before me._ Brienne took a shuddering breath and let her gaze drift to Jaime’s solid back.

There was a time when Brienne would have given anything to be a part of the Kingsguard, to hang her sword and scabbard in one of the cells down the hall behind her. Protect her king and give her life for him. Fight for good, for honor and glory. She had been a stupid girl back then – naive and full of knightly tales and maidenly dreams. But that was before she took off Lady Stoneheart’s head. Before she pulled Sansa Stark from a snow bank in the Vale. Before the Wall, the wights, and Winterfell. Before nights full of the dead and dying; nights so cold she could barely breathe, when sleet lashed against her face, and the only way to tell she was alive was by the comfort of Jaime’s warm skin against her own.

Those nights had caused her the most pain and confusion.

“Brienne.”

Jaime’s voice was a dim light in a fog of memories. He said her name again, louder, and Brienne looked over at his blurry form by the window. She was weeping.

Brienne cursed and swiped her eyes. _I am lake in winter_ , she breathed, _cold and calm and still_. She raised her chin against the tenderness in Jaime’s expression.

“What would you ask of me, ser?” She would not be pitied.

Jaime’s eyes hardened at her tone. She could see the barbed words on his tongue, pushing at his lips like so many spears. _Let them come._ Brienne knew how to deal with his cruel japes and insults. She liked them better than goodbyes.

Jaime swallowed his words and took a breath. “This is not easy for me, either, wench. I would not have us parted so easily as this.”

“Then do not let it happen.”

The words hung glinting in the air. Brienne blushed. For an absurd moment, it was as if she stood naked in the baths of Harrenhal again, water dripping down between her breasts as Jaime peered up at her through the heat and mist. The memory sent a shiver down her spine.

Jaime cleared his throat and turned back to the window. His cheeks were ruddy and Brienne wondered where his thoughts were at that moment. Did they follow her own? She had never so much as kissed him, and yet sometimes the tension between them was as taut as writhing lovers. She did not have to lose her maidenhead to know the intimacy that lay between them. It was unlike anything she had ever known – fierce and foolish. It made her advance when she knew she should retreat.

Jaime shook his head slowly. “Duty calls for both of us, Brienne,” he said softly. “Tarth has fallen, and King’s Landing is no better. Everything around us burns. The Kingsguard is broken. And my family...”

He looked at her, then. His eyes were cloudy and dark, full of accusation. Brienne shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“Would you have me abandon my oaths now, after everything?” Jaime asked. “Would you abandon your own?”

Brienne did not think it very fair that Jaime Lannister should be lecturing her about duty and honor. Of course she knew what awaited her at home. She had heard the reports alongside Stannis, Jon Snow, and the rest of them at the Wall. Tarth had fallen to the false dragon. Her father was a prisoner on his own island – the Evenstar, cast down into the darkness of his dungeons.

The False Dragon, Aegon the would-be-conqueror, had left a path of devastation behind his party. It took all of the men in Westeros – those who hadn’t already made their way north to fight the Others, to bring him into submission. They had heard little from Tarth after receiving that first terrible missive, scrawled hurriedly on a piece of parchment and tied to a raven: _Tarth has fallen._ After that, the ravens Brienne sent to Tarth came back with their messages still attached to their legs or not at all. The Evenstar could be dead by now, for all Brienne knew. The thought brought tears to her eyes and a soreness to her throat. _Father_.

Now the False Dragon’s head sat on a pike outside the Red Keep, while Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, the true Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, tried to piece the country back together with her legions of freedmen and Unsullied. In the meantime, Tarth had been abandoned – by the false dragon and his Golden Company, by Daenerys, who did not have the time to worry about an inconsequential island in the Narrow Sea, and even Brienne, who would rather moon after a man dressed in white and languish about what remained of King’s Landing.

Jaime was right – where was her honor? Where was her duty?

“Tarth,” Brienne whispered. It was not a question, not a prayer; it was a promise.

She would go to Tarth and do her duty. Rebuild and restore what was left. She could almost see Jaime’s body relax with relief. Disappointment flooded through her like icy water, and Brienne looked down at her lap. He did not want her here.

Since coming to King’s Landing, Brienne had heard no end of snickering and snide comments. She had been knighted at the Wall by Ser Barristan Selmy himself as war waged around them and dragons filled the air with cinder and ash, but the ladies and men of court did not see a knight when they looked at her; they saw a girl dressed in armor, big and ugly and ungraceful.

Brienne had bent knee before Queen Daenerys three weeks ago, and although she suspected the Queen was rather fond of having a lady knight in her court, she had not been offered a place on the Queensguard, nor had she been invited into Daenerys’ inner circle. Brienne and Jaime both knew that it was her proximity to the Kingslayer that kept her outside of that circle. Jaime’s brother Tyrion had said as much to them on more than one occasion, his mismatched eyes solemn and apologetic.

Even now, Jaime’s own future was uncertain. His standing as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was ornamental, if anything. Brienne did not have to be well versed in court politics to know that the currents of change were flowing through the halls of the Red Keep. No one knew where they would be when summer finally came again; allegiances were as everlasting as smoke upon the wind. Brienne’s presence only made Jaime’s future more uncertain. A lady knight and a kingslayer were one too many anomalies for the fledgling court.

No, Jaime would not have to convince Brienne to do her duty. They could sweep Brienne’s pleas and desperate words under the rug and go on as they always had – the beautiful, golden knight and his ugly, honorable companion.

“I have something for you,” said Jaime, walking over to the table. He sat down before the book and rested his stump on top of the lambskin cover.

“The White Book?” Brienne breathed hopefully. What she would give to run her fingers across those pages, to read each account, written in the very hand of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Jaime smirked and shook his head. “Not quite, my lady.” He pushed the book towards her. “Open it.”

Brienne hesitated a moment before flipping the lambskin off the book. It was not the White Book, as she had hoped. The cover of this book was dark leather, pressed with scrolls and filigree designs. Intricate bronze clasps were nailed into the corners of the binding, so that it sat raised slightly off the table. Brienne ran her fingers across the clasps. Each one had a tiny great sword hammered into it, each sword pointing toward the center of the book, as if to pay homage to the stories within. She opened the cover to the title page.

“Tales of Knightly Valor of the Seven Kingdoms and Beyond,” she read.

She looked up. Jaime was watching her carefully.

“I had a book like this once before,” Brienne whispered. “A knight—“ her voice caught on the word, remembering Ser Hyle Hunt and his easy laughter, “a valiant knight gifted such a book to me a long time ago.”

She could not read the expression in Jaime’s eyes, but she saw his mouth quirk up at the corners. “I know,” he said. “You told me of it once, when we were on the road to the Vale.”

Brienne nodded, battling away the memory of that trip. She focused instead on the page before her. It was wonderfully illuminated along the bottom of the page, with tiny drawings of forest creatures preparing for battle. They were in an army camp, with tiny gilded tents and pavilions scattered across a valley. Mice and squirrels assisted snail knights and rabbits and stoats with their armor. Red and blue banners flapped in the wind, and off in one corner, an armored badger stood upon a hill above the company, blowing a golden horn.

She made to touch the badger with a calloused fingertip, but paused in the air above the page. _I may crush him_ , she thought absurdly, _before his battle is even won._

“Jaime,” she whispered, lowering her hand to her lap as her eyes traced the lines on the page, “I cannot accept such a gift.”

She glanced up at him. Jaime narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, looking very much like his sister.

Where Cersei was now, Brienne could not say – the woman had escaped her imprisonment in the Red Keep shortly after the Longest Night fell. Brienne and Jaime were far off in the north, but word of her escape had found them nevertheless, delivered on the leg of a raven. Jaime had kept the missive rolled tightly in his hand, but he told Brienne the news a day later. The disgraced ex-regent had crawled on bloody hands and knees from the bowels of the Keep under the cover of darkness. They suspected she had made for a ship across the Narrow Sea, but no one truly knew where the lioness had gone to lick her wounds.

Brienne was not surprised Cersei had managed to escape her punishment. She had been marked for death, and instead she gained her life – she would not have been the first Lannister to find their tale rewritten so, nor, Brienne suspected, the last.

“You cannot accept it?” Jaime’s words shook Brienne from the past. It seemed a day to be lost in memories. She blamed it on the man before her. They had been through so much together; it was hard to remember a time when she had just been Brienne of Tarth.

“It is a beautiful book,” Brienne answered, looking down at her hands. “A fragile book. Too beautiful and fragile for a knight.”

Jaime let out a frustrated sigh. “It is a _book_ of knights,” he growled. “True stories of honor and glory and strength! Do you think a book such as that would fall apart beneath your fingertips?”

Brienne smiled as his speech dissolved into muttering. She thought she heard “stupid” and “stubborn” and “wench” scattered among his rumbling.

“What would I do with such a book, ser?” There was sadness in her voice that she did not try to hide. “Keep it tucked in my bedroll like Oathkeeper? Should I read it to Pod across the fire at night? Should I read it to my lord father’s grave on Tarth?”

Her voice caught on the last word and suddenly Brienne was weeping again. Jaime was up and around the table in two breaths, kneeling at her side. He placed a hand on her shoulder, his stump resting on her knee. Brienne gulped in air, feeling like a drowning woman. She sank forward until her head was pressed into the warm column of Jaime’s neck.

They had not been so close in weeks. Not since coming to Kings Landing to take up their duty to Queen Daenerys. There were rules and expectations of courtly protocol to deal with now, new expectations and frustrations as they tried to make sense of peacetime and the roles they would each play. Brienne and Jaime no longer had the freedom to seek one another for comfort. They were far from the Wall, and the cold of winter had been replaced by the tentative warmth of spring.

Brienne pulled away, too aware of the way Jaime’s hand had drifted from her shoulder to the small of her back. His face was strained with sympathy and something else. She was terrified to read whatever it was that darkened his eyes to the same deep shade as the northern pines. In truth, she had always been a little afraid of what she might find in Jaime’s eyes if she looked too long.

She wiped her face, and then wiped her hands against her breeches, sniffing, breaking the moment like ice beneath the heel of her boot. Jaime stood and stepped back. He leaned against the edge of the table, still near enough to touch her. Brienne’s fingers ached at the temptation to reach out and stroke the hem of his white silk cloak.

“I cannot promise that you will find your father, wench,” said Jaime softly, “but you must try.”

Brienne sniffed again and nodded, wishing desperately that for once the tears would not come. _Knights_ did not weep. Yet, she had never truly felt like a knight. She was too untried, too young, too much a woman. Weeping only made it worse. She wished she had the strength of a thousand Unsullied; but in that moment, Brienne felt afraid. She felt like Renly was dying in her arms all over again, his blood seeping down her hands, staining her skin. She had never felt so powerless, and yet here was Jaime, telling her to hope.

“Where will you go?” Brienne asked him.

Jaime reached out and touched her shoulder once more, fleetingly. He turned and moved back to his seat across the table.

“The Dragon Queen has not yet made her decision.”

“So you are a prisoner, too,” Brienne whispered.

“Don’t be stupid, wench,” said Jaime harshly. He gestured to the window and the sea beyond, his expression tense. “You have your freedom. It’s there, across the water.”

Late afternoon sun came in through the window. Just beyond, a haze of blue sky brushed against a darker shade of sea. Whatever awaited Brienne across the water would not be home; the Tarth of her childhood was gone, stolen away in the winds of winter. Would her father even recognize her now, if he lived? Would he even want her back?

Brienne shook her head. “I have a path laid out before me, ser, that is all. A path chosen for me by another.”

“Stubborn girl,” said Jaime softly, “you have never been very good at seeing what is right before you.”

Brienne reached out and touched the cover of the book. _Calm and cold and still._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Any and all feedback is welcome!


End file.
